


Damned If You Don't

by nereid



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-14
Updated: 2014-04-14
Packaged: 2018-01-19 09:19:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1464019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nereid/pseuds/nereid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(Takes place between seasons 5 and 6.) There's no one left anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Damned If You Don't

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a ficathon. The prompt was: and maybe you don't go to hell for the things you do. Maybe you go to hell for the things you don't do.

Sometimes, late at night, when Willlow and Tara and the BuffyBot are all asleep, and Spike, Spike is God knows where, Dawn is all alone.

 

(Because everyone always is in the end, it's one of those things Dawn just knows with that absolute certainty with which a 15 year old girl (or something masquerading as one) knows everything.)

 

(Dawn knows how Whiskey tastes because Giles gives her some after Buffy's body is put into the ground, she knows the sound of a powerful witch crying in her dead mother's untouched bedroom after her sister gives her life to save the planet, to save her, she also knows hope from the briefest of moments of something that passes through Xander's eyes every time he sees the BuffyBot and thinks it might be _her_. She knows all these things, this new Dawn, the Dawn who lost the sister that was never hers to have in the first place.)

 

And sometimes, when Dawn is left alone, her mind wanders. (She will never admit to this.)

 

Sometimes, Dawn is not a girl that wasn't a girl at all when she began, sometimes she is not at all mystical, key shaped energy with a single purpose.

 

Sometimes she's simply a girl staring at a boy. Man. Monster. Whatever. It's a boy ( _manboymonster_ ) she should not be staring at - (though, aren't they all?) - but she still does, and that's all there is to it. (Maybe.)

 

She stares and stares and thinks -- imagines things, runs scenarios, scenarios that mostly end with Spike's hands in her hair and Spike's hands on her neck and Spike's lips on hers.

 

Because she's a 15 year old girl, she lets herself imagine romantic walks, and because of her bringing up, the walks she imagines are through the graveyard, under moonlight, and she and Spike kiss between slaying a few vampires.

 

She can't tell things apart these days. Not trivial things, like reality from dreams or tragedy from comedy. (But those sometimes too.) That's what she's gotten used to already, but these days she doesn't know what to do or how to feel or if she should feel anything in the first place. (She's nothing, remember? Her sister died for nothing.)

 

_There's no one left anymore_ , she yells at Spike when Willow and Tara are both gone, because she only yells at Spike when Willow and Tara are both gone.

 

_I know, Lil Bit_ , he says and in her head he kisses her, rough and fast and while he pushes her against the nearest wall, but outside of her head he doesn't kiss her at all, and even when he doesn't kiss her yet again (Spike doesn't kiss her about a hundred and twenty four times a day, on average) she still thinks this should not be happening. Not when Buffy died for her to live and now all she thinks about while living is kissing Spike.

 

As long as she doesn't act on it, though, it's ok. As long as she doesn't, it's fine.

 

So far, no one's ever gone to hell for wanting to kiss a vampire.

 

She thinks sometimes, she might just be the first.


End file.
